Science: Diggers

Plagued Villages. Early explorers told tall tales about fortified
villages of agricultural Indians along the Missouri River. By the time
the permanent white settlers flooded into Nebraska a few generations
later, these people had almost vanished. Then the region was dominated
by the fierce, nomadic Dakotas, a branch of the Sioux that had formerly
been of minor importance. Archaeologists of the Smithsonian
Institution, racing to beat the great dams rising along the Missouri,
have been excavating Indian sites on the river bottoms. They now
confirm the old tall tales.